Q16 - In order to expand its mailing

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Principle Support (Strengthen/Sufficient)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Judgment: Paying for contact info of friends is unethical.
Situation: This practice risks damaging friendships. Because no one wants to be friends with a mad spammer.

Answer Anticipation:
These questions are fairly predictable. The answer will connect the situation to the judgment. We should look for something akin to, "Anything that risks damaging friendships is unethical."

Correct Answer:
(D)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Tempting! However, the conclusion is about whether this practice is unethical for the businesses, not for the individuals who are selling their friends out. This answer choice is about the unscrupulous friends.

(B) Out of scope. The argument doesn't mention unethical uses of this information.

(C) Out of scope. The argument doesn't say businesses are deliberately hurting friendships. It seems as if that damage is an unintended consequence.

(D) Bingo. Similar to (A), this connects the practice that risks damage to friendships with being unethical. Unlike (A), this one calls the practices of the businesses unethical, which is what the conclusion of the argument does.

(E) Premise booster. The argument states that this is a risk, and this answer elevates that to an almost certain risk. It still doesn't connect that behavior to the conclusion of "unethical".

Takeaway/Pattern: For Principle Support/Strengthen questions, the stimulus generally describes a situation and makes a judgment about someone in that situation. The correct answer will connect the situation to the judgment. However, there's a common trap here - connecting the situation and judgment to the wrong group. Make sure you know to whom the judgment in the conclusion applies, and make sure your answer matches up with that.

#officialexplanation

[tuh119]

Why is (A) wrong?

[maryadkins]

Because the LSAT folks are being sly. Who does the stimulus say is being unethical? This hunting/skiing/whatever company. How? By encouraging people to exploit their friends. (A) drops the company out altogether by calling the people who exploit their friends unethical. It's a close principle, but not the most precise one underlying the argument--it blames the wrong crowd.

[irini101]

I choose D out of gut feeling. But C seems really close, could any one pinpoint what's the error in C?

Thanks in advance!

[tuh119]

I think that (D) is wrong because in the argument, the author didn't claim that the company "deliberately" damage the relationship, instead, it "risks" damaging the relationship.

"Deliberately" is too strong of substitute for "risk".

[maryadkins]

Yes!

(C) is wrong because the stimulus says nothing about "deliberate" action on the part of the company.

As for the other answer choices that haven't come up on this thread yet:

(B) misconstrues the argument. The argument is not that using the information is unethical and therefore gathering it is.

(E) is too extreme ("will almost certainly"), and like (A), it focuses on the people in friendships while leaving out the company.

[irini101]

Thanks!

[kaseyb002]

For (A), I felt like it gave the conclusion a possible out. (A) says "if they do actually damage the integrity of the relationship" while (D) correctly says "could", or "even if it's just a chance, then it's unethical".

Am I on the right track?

[mswang7]

A. the argument does not say if in doing so (exploit personal relationships) damaging it is unethical. It says it is unethical because it damages integrity.
B. This doesn't address why it is unethical
C. I take issue with "deliberately" in this answer choice. It is not stated the company deliberately damages relationships.
D. Nice soft language that the LSAT likes
E. Will almost certainly is pretty strong and this strikes me as an answer choice for a most strongly supported question. This is not the principle driving this problem.

[smiller]

Apologies for our slow reply. A few questions and comments slipped by us recently.

You seem to have a great understanding of some of the answer choices, but it might help to look more closely at (A) and (D).

For choice (A), it's correct that the argument does not state, "if exploiting personal relationships might damage those relationships then it is unethical." This doesn't make choice (A) wrong, though. We aren't looking for something that is stated in the argument. The correct answer will describe something that is not explicitly stated, but would strengthen the argument if true.

The word "because" in the stimulus is a premise indicator. The premises state that the incentives encourage people to exploit their personal relationships, and that doing so could damage those relationships. From this, the argument concludes that the incentives are an unethical business practice. According to choice (A), if people risk damaging their personal relationships then those people--the customers--are acting unethically. This doesn't help support the conclusion that the sports company is acting unethically. The conclusion of the original argument is about the ethics of the sports company's incentives, not the ethics of the customers' actions. That's why choice (A) is incorrect.

The word "could" in choice (D) can certainly be considered "soft" language. But that by itself is not why (D) is correct, and we wouldn't want to choose (D) for that reason. When choice (D) states that people "could" damage their relationships, it's very similar to stating that they "risk" damaging their relationships just as choice (A) does. And while "soft" language is definitely appealing when evaluating answers to some LR questions, strong language is very appealing in others. In Strengthen questions like this one, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with a strongly-worded answer.

As Matt Shinners noted above, choice (D) is correct because it addresses the actions described in the premises, behavior that could damage personal relationships. But unlike choice (A), choice (D) states that it would be unethical to encourage this behavior. That would make the sports company's behavior unethical, supporting our conclusion.

[JeremyK460]

Love all the discussion! Here's my analysis

Breakdown:
Support: Gaining incentives for providing your friend’s email address encourages people to exploit their personal relationship for profit. This risks damaging the integrity of the relationship.

Conclusion: Providing your friend’s email address to a business for incentives in return is an unethical business practice.

Analysis:
The conclusion prescribes that a certain business practice is unethical. This prescription is supported by an example. When this happens, a principle can be used to justify the prescription that the practice exemplified is unethical. A business that encourages customers to exploit personal relationships for profit is unethical.

Answer Choices:
(A) People behaving unethically is relevant to the argument, but it isn’t what the argument is mainly concerned about. It’s concerned with a business’s practice being unethical whereas this answer is concerned with a person’s behavior being unethical. Also, what’s unethical for people may not be unethical for business.

(B) This answer is concerned with whether gathering such an email is unethical depending on whether that email was used unethically. The ethicality of using such an email doesn’t seem relevant to the argument. Also, if anything, these ideas feel flipped to me. I would think the logic would want to arrive at the unethical use of information rather than gathering that information.

(C) The idea of intent isn’t mentioned in the argument.

(D) This is like my analysis. Encouraging people to exploit their personal friendships that could damage their friendships (which behavior alludes to) is unethical. The conclusion asserts that what the business is doing is unethical, and supports this with an example of the business’s practice. The argument goes unstated in how its example of the practice fits the prescribed unethicality in its conclusion. This principle allows me to justify the example as something unethical.

(E) The argument isn’t about what will certainly damage a friendship. The argument is about something qualifying as unethical.

[TilP164]

I chose C over D for the following reasons:

1. I justified C by thinking that planning a promotional strategy with such and such likely consequences could maybe considered deliberate. I didn't like it but it wasn't enough for me to rule it out.

2. D says "unethical" generally. What is an unethical business strategy may not be considered unethical in a general sense, and vice versa.
C says unethical business strategy, which matches the question.

Where is my thinking problematic?